I looked over the three first chapters of the book again today and started to rewrite it to be more in line with the later chapters. This is a mistake I keep making and I am trying to stop.
The problem is I haven’t finished the book yet, so it is too early to start doing the second edit. I’m not even two thirds of the way through so I really shouldn’t even be thinking about it.
The main problem with rewriting so early is other ideas pop up which means that once I start, I need to keep going through the other chapters to make sure it is consistent. And the story changes as well. Passages and occurrences get cut or moved to an earlier/later date; characters personalities change or get deleted or placed on the file under “possible sequel”. I once deleted a whole dimension by doing this. That was a good thing though as the dimension wasn’t the best idea I have had. Kind of like the last chapter of “Picnic at Hanging Rock’ type of bad idea.
It also knocks my plan for the book out of whack and I have to either revise that or somehow work it into the new story.
It doesn’t help that I generally do it when I have a writer’s block thing going on. Sometimes I get overly tired and can’t think enough to write so I kind of cheat by saying “I’ll do rewrites” or “There is a short story coming up, I should write a story for that.” The second isn’t a bad thing, at least it’s being creative enough, and there have been a few short stories that have characters so strong that I have actually transferred them into the book and started writing again. Which is a good thing.
Speaking of which, writing a blog entry at the moment goes neatly on the list of “Finding-Things-To –Do-Besides-Actually-Writing.
I have 10,000 more words to go today.
Until next time
